In July, I had the opportunity to mark an item off my travel hacking bucket list by flying Lufthansa first class from Chicago to Munich, Germany. The cash price of this flight was about $14,000. I booked it for 85,180 miles plus about $70 in fees! Booking Lufthansa first class is notably challenging because they typically don’t release first class awards to their partners until about 14 days before departure. Despite the challenge of securing a flight on such short notice, there are strategies to make booking a Lufthansa first class award more attainable. In this article, I’ll share some of my tips and also provide a review of my experience.
I booked this flight by transferring AMEX Membership Reward points to Avianca Lifemiles. Earning Lifemiles is easy since Avianca is a 1:1 transfer partner of AMEX, Citi, and Capital One. In another post, I give my advice on how to quickly build up a massive balance of transferrable points and miles so make sure to read if you haven’t already.
In most cases, you are going to pay 87,000 Lifemiles for Lufthansa first class from any of the United States airports that offer the flight. My flight from ORD – MUC was actually only 80,380 miles but was bumped up to 85,180 with my connection to Hamburg. Through Aug 31st, AMEX is offering a 15% bonus to points transferred to Lifemiles allowing you to book this experience for only 76,000 miles and less than $100 out of pocket.
I wouldn’t transfer the points to take advantage of this deal unless you plan on booking a flight in the near future. You don’t want to transfer points without a redemption in mind since you never know when a program might get devalued. But don’t worry if you miss this promotion. Similar promotions happen quite frequently.
You are obviously going to need to have a flexible schedule in order to book an international trip less than two weeks prior to departure. But if you want to plan a trip to Germany well in advance, consider booking award flights with an airline that has a reasonable cancellation policy. This allows you to secure your flights much further in advance.
I booked my original July flight to Munich with KLM this past December. It was a seat in business class that cost 79,000 miles plus $237 in fees. However, their cancellation policy allows for a full refund of the miles and fees minus a reasonable $50 cancellation fee up until the time of final check in. This policy allowed me to secure a flight to Germany eight months in advance. On July 26th, I found availability for Lufthansa first class that was leaving on July 30th and booked the flight. I then cancelled my KLM flight and was refunded the full 79,000 miles along with $187 out of the $237 I paid in fees. I only paid $70 in fees for the Lufthansa award flight.
Your best option for flying Lufthansa first class with miles is going to be with either United or Avianca’s Lifemiles program. As mentioned, Lufthansa is known to only make first class award flights available to their partners two weeks prior to departure. Booking directly through Lufthansa’s own loyalty program, Miles & Mile, is not going to be a reasonable option for most people since there is currently only one Miles & More co-branded credit card being offered to US customers with a welcome offer in the form of miles. Miles & More does not even offer an option to search for award flights unless you already have a sufficient miles balance with them.
Before starting your search, you’ll want to verify which routes Lufthansa operates its first class cabin. The destinations in which Lufthansa flies their first class cabin to and from Munich and Frankfurt can be found at https://www.lufthansa.com/lt/en/first-class-destinations. As of this writing, the routes are as pictured below.
If none of these routes depart from your home airport, consider booking a positioning flight to reach the appropriate starting point. To get to Chicago for my first class flight, I booked an economy flight from LAS to ORD for 7,500 Turkish Airline miles (transferred from Capital One) plus $5.60 in fees. This saved me almost $400 on the last minute flight. I’ll write about how I pulled off this lesser known travel hacking trick in a future post.
As I was writing this post, I did a quick search for first class award flights available over the next two weeks from LAX, SFO, ORD, and JFK/EWR. I couldn’t find anything to Munich or Frankfurt from either LAX or SFO. Finding award availability on these two routes is notoriously difficult. I did, however, find several days of availability over the next week to Munich from both ORD and EWR.
When searching for this specific award flight, I prefer beginning with United, as I find their 30-day calendar more user-friendly than Lifemiles’ day-by-day search. Go to the United Airlines homepage and set up your search as pictured below. I’ll use ORD – MUC as an example.
After selecting ‘Find flights’, apply a filter for nonstop flights and then search for flights operated by Lufthansa. If the search shows no nonstop first class Lufthansa flights available, click through the following days over the next two weeks. Try with different airports if you don’t have any luck on your first choice of route. Remember, it’s not that difficult to find good domestic award availability on positioning flights.
United is going to charge you 121,000 miles to book this flight but only $5.60 in fees. Not bad for a nearly $15,000 flight. Still, paying $65 more and saving 34,000 is a much better deal if you have the required AMEX, Citi, or Capital One miles to transfer to Lifemiles.
After finding a flight with United, you can head over to lifemiles.com and confirm that they are showing the same availability. Once you do and are ready to book the flight, you can then transfer the required points. The transfer of my AMEX Membership Reward points was almost instantaneous.
It’s worth noting that Lifemiles will charge an additional $25 redemption fee, beyond the fees displayed prior to the payment page. For the actual flight that I booked, I was shown that my total fees were $44.80 before being surprised with an additional $25 at checkout. This is rarely mentioned in other blogs.
Before reviewing my flight, here’s a summary of my tips for securing Lufthansa first class award flights. Some of these tips apply to searching for award availability with any airline.
While Lufthansa doesn’t have its own dedicated lounge at Chicago O’Hare, first class passengers have access to the excellent United Polaris Lounge. The Polaris Lounge is about a five minute walk to the gate. First class passengers can also access the United Club situated adjacent to the gate, but the Polaris Lounge is certainly worth the additional five minute walk.
The lounge has a full self-serve buffet featuring multiple warm dishes, salad bar, meats and cheeses, sandwiches, fruit selection, desserts, and beverages. Additionally, there is a separate full service dining room with a dedicated menu. There was a wait for the dining room while I was there so I opted for the buffet which was solid. Everything is complimentary.
The lounge itself was very nice offering plenty of open and private seating, a nice bar, shower suites, and more.
Once at the gate, there was a dedicated seating section for both first class and business class passengers.
I had a two hour connection in Munich and was looking forward to visiting the Lufthansa First Class Lounge at Terminal 2 as I heard it was amazing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of it because an incredibly rude employee at check-in scolded me for taking pictures and instructed me to delete the ones I’d already taken. I’ve been in multiple first class lounges, including the Emirates first class lounge in Dubai, and I’ve never had anything said to me about taking pictures. But lesson learned. Always ask during check-in about the lounge’s photography policy. As off-putting as this employee’s attitude was, the rest of the staff was incredibly nice once I was inside.
I don’t have much to say about the lounge itself. My time there was short, and I was put off by the check-in employee’s attitude. It was a nice lounge, but I’ve been in countless other lounges around the world that were much nicer, including the ORD Polaris lounge I experienced on my way to Munich.
As of this writing, Lufthansa operates four distinct aircraft types equipped with a first class cabin. Unlike the A340/330s, the A380 features its first class cabin on an upper deck. This cabin offers larger lavatories and provides lockers for each first class seat, given the absence of overhead bins. The seats are largely the same as the A340/330s while the lavatories on the A340 were the standard size of those typically found in economy and nothing impressive.
The first class cabin on the 747-8s is also situated on the upper deck and provides individual lockers for each seat. The seats differ from the other cabins in that each first class seat has a bed separate from the seat itself. The first-class cabins in both the 747-8 and A380 are expected to be quieter than those in the A340/330s due to their distance from the engines. If any of these differences are particularly important to you, make sure to verify the aircraft type before booking.
I flew in the A340 and will be reviewing that aircraft experience.
Lufthansa first class seats may not offer as much privacy as other first class products due to a lack of a closing door, but they are still an excellent way to spend nine hours in the sky. Privacy wasn’t much of an issue on my flight since only five of the eight seats were occupied. The cabin was laid out in a two row, 1-2-1 configuration. I was in the left window seat of the second row, and no one was in the two seats to my right. There is also a divider that can be raised for a small amount of additional privacy.
The seat was incredibly comfortable and spacious with plenty of storage space. The footrest opens up so you can store your belongings, and there was additional storage in the armrest. Each seat also had its own dedicated overhead bin. There were no lockers for each seat in this cabin. Each seat can be adjusted into a fully lie flat bed.
The screens for the in-flight entertainment were somewhat small compared to other business/first class screens I’ve seen and in a fixed position. Each seat had adequate power with 2 AC outlets and 2 USB sockets.
Each seat had direct aisle access, but I would avoid the two middle seats in the first aisle since they are right in front of the bar. As much as I liked the first class flight attendants, I wouldn’t want them constantly pouring drinks right in front of me. Always check out a site like seatguru.com before choosing your seat.
A few minutes after boarding, I was greeted by the flight attendant and offered champagne and macadamia nuts. Shortly after, the amenity kit and a set of pajamas and slippers were offered. I’m not a pajamas wearer, but you do get to keep them, and they ended up proving useful during cold nights while camping in Germany. The food and wine menus were brought by about 20 minutes after boarding.
Overall, I loved the seat, but I do have two complaints. First, the headphones (pictured below) were in laughably awful shape. While I’m sure they would have brought me new headphones had I asked, it was pretty embarrassing for such a luxury product to have missed this quality check. My second complaint was the lack of individual cooling fans for the seats. The seat and bedding were very comfortable, but I found the temperature of the cabin far too warm to be able to fall asleep. Luckily I had brought a small USB powered fan or I would have been incredibly uncomfortable.
The first class crew was absolutely great. They were very friendly and conversational. I’m probably not their typical first class passenger, but they were every bit as professional and friendly with me as they were with the other passengers. There were two attendants dedicated to the five of us in first class, so you never had to wait long for any request. The service was absolutely top notch and something that you just don’t get with international business class flights.
The onboard movie selection was decent, but not overly impressive. I recall there only being two movies that were still in theaters although the overall selection of recent movies wasn’t bad. First class passengers did receive complimentary Wi-Fi for the entire flight. This made up for the onboard entertainment’s limitations as long as you brought your own device for viewing.
My only complaints about the flight experience were its duration—it wasn’t long enough—and its departure time; I wished it had left earlier in the day. Those of you who have yet to fly in international business or first class may think a complaint of a flight being too short is absurd, but you’ll get it once you experience it yourself. I often enjoy the flight experience more than I do my actual destination. There is a reason why the longer first class Lufthansa flights from the west coast are so hard to book.
The flights from the west coast also leave earlier in the day. My flight departed at 9pm with a scheduled arrival in Munich at 1pm so everyone, including me, wanted to get some rest shortly after meal service concluded. This further made the in air experience feel shorter than I would have preferred. I definitely want to fly Lufthansa first class from the west coast at some point, especially when they debut their new first class offering sometime next year.
Hot towels were brought out about five minutes after reaching cruising altitude, and the bar was set up. About 25 minutes later, dinner orders were taken. Shortly after orders were taken, the appetizer cart was brought out along with a selection of breads. There were five different appetizers on the cart, and you could have one of each if you wanted. I opted for four out of the five, and they were excellent.
Dinner was served about 45 minutes after the appetizers were brought out. Feeling confident about the little German I knew, or perhaps just tipsy from the champagne and beers, I only took pictures of the German section of the food menu. I chose the pan-fried salmon which was served hot and was tasty.
I was full after dinner so I skipped on dessert, and I chose to sleep through breakfast. Shortly before landing, I was offered a box of chocolates which were really good.
Booking this product less than two weeks before departure isn’t easy, but there are steps you can take to make it happen. And you should. Lufthansa first class is a top notch product and one of the best experiences I have ever had in the sky. At just 87,000 miles and less than $100 out of pocket, a flight with a cash value close to $15,000 is definitely something you want to try and experience. There were some minor imperfections, but the overall experience was incredible and something I can’t wait to do again. Flights like this are what the travel game is all about.
If you found the information here helpful and decide to apply for any of the cards mentioned, please consider signing up through my referral links (if available) on the home page.
